EKOTEK Soluciones Medioambientales

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Development of a tool for sustainable production in the cement sector

Objectives

In order to improve the production processes and increase their sustainability, EKOTEK, by means of this Project, will design and develop a decision making tool which will be able to simultaneously apply strategies oriented to waste management and to sustainable resource management in the cement industry. This will permit to minimize and optimize the environmental impact of the process, for which the application will consider strategies such as industrial ecology, resource efficiency, reuse, life cycle assessment (LCA), etc..

Results

The developed tool (ECOCEM) offers the possibility to evaluate the environmental and economic impacts related to each and every phase of the cement manufacturing process. Thus, the user will not only have detailed knowledge of the actual environmental impacts and costs associated with the process, but he will also be able to simulate and analyze the environmental impacts and costs that would be generated by introducing or modifying any of the elements of the production process, such as the variation of the percentages of the raw materials, change of fuels, modifications in the gas purification system, etc. The ECOCEM tool is, therefore, besides a tool for the evaluation of the actual environmental and economic impacts, a powerful application to aid decision-making for the improvement of the cement production process from a sustainable perspective. The tool, whose operation is intuitive and similar to a tutorial, allows the user to configure the cement manufacturing process in a very easy way, introducing information about the crude, fuel, kiln and possible purification devices.